Why Most Organizations Don’t Have a Content Problem

Employees can’t find the content they need. Important messages miss their targets. Policies are misunderstood.

Leaders think content is the problem, so they ask for “better content,” “more clarity,” or “stronger storytelling.”

Sound familiar?

The result in more content, but little changes.

Because the problem isn’t content, but content experience.

Content vs. Content Experience

Yes, there is a difference between content and content experiences.

Content is the artifact:

• The article

• The policy

• The page

• The video

The content experience is everything that happens around it:

• How employees find it

• Whether they trust it

• If it answers the right question at the right moment

• What happens after they read it

You can have accurate content and still deliver a poor experience.

When Content Exists, But Clarity Doesn’t

Nearly two decades of journalism, nonprofit, and corporate content leadership have led us to this: content rarely fails because it’s poorly written and most internal communication is thoughtful with the deep intent of doing right by employees.

The failure happens earlier - and later. 

If you’re reading this, we’re sure you’ve experienced at least one of these challenges (we certainly have): 

•           Content is created in silos

•           Content ownership is unclear

•           Search results don’t reflect how employees think

•           Content updates lag behind organizational change

•           Measurement focuses on page views instead of understanding or adoption

Here’s another truth we’ve seen: When done wrong, employees experience content in fragments, not a system. Content is disconnected because employees must navigate multiple platforms (emails, knowledge articles, multiple intranet websites, etc.) just to understand one thing.

 In short, employees are confused because the content experience isn’t connected.

Content Is How Employees Experience the Organization

Disconnection is often a sign that internal content creators/leaders don’t fully understand how employees experience content.

They experience it as moments: 

•           When they search for benefits information and can’t find a clear answer

•           When a policy update doesn’t explain what changed or who it affects

•           When a link leads to outdated information - or the link it broken

•           When search results surface five versions of the same thing

In those moments, content becomes the organization. 

If the experience is fragmented, the organization is fragmented. If it’s unclear, the organization is unclear. If the information is unreliable, organization trust erodes - quietly.

This becomes painfully obvious within intranets. Organizations invest heavily in HR case management, knowledge bases, and AI search, expecting technology to solve clarity problems.

But platforms don’t create clarity - content experience does.

We’ve watched teams roll out powerful tools only to be disappointed when adoption lags. The tool (i.e., AI search) is doing it’s job but the content experience didn’t match how employees actually work, search, or make decisions.

More Content Makes Things Worse

When leaders sense confusion, they often ask for more communication:

•           “Let’s send a follow-up email”

•           “Let’s add another page”

•           “Let’s create a toolkit”

All of this sounds and feels reasonable, but adjusting a phrase from our IT friends, increases content debt.

Any platform that lacks impactful content experience design increases employee cognitive load because workers are now forced to interpret, compare, and reconcile information on their own.

Over time, employees stop searching and automatically submit an HR or IT case. They ask peers. They escalate to managers. They rely on unofficial sources.

So while the system technically works, there’s no trust in it.

Which means the system isn’t working.

What Changes When You Design the Experience 

When organizations shift their mindset from content production to experience design, everything changes.

 Instead of asking “did we publish this,” the questions evolve to: 

•           Can employees find this when they need it?

•           Do they understand what’s changing and why?

•           Is the next action clear?

•           Do we know if this actually worked?

This involves redesigning content experiences where:

•           Intranet pages, campaigns, and knowledge articles are aligned so they tell one coherent story

•           Content is written based on search behavior, not internal org charts

•           Ownership is clear so content stays current over time

•           Success is measured by adoption and usage patterns, not just clicks

The result isn’t flashier content, but more streamlined systems that produce fewer questions and stronger trust.

And the effort is measurable: Adoption rates. Search success. Case deflection. Time-to-resolution. Confidence signals in employee feedback.

This is the power of content intelligence, where data, experience design, and editorial rigor are utilized to accelerate speed to results.

Reframing the Problem

If employees are confused, disengaged, or ignoring important information, the instinct is to fix the message.

But since you made it to the bottom of this post, you know that the better question is this: What’s the experience we’re creating around this content?

Most organizations already have what they need to create the experience. What they’re missing is intention: How content is designed, connected, governed, and measured over time.

Such presents an experience problem that once solved, creates clarity that alleviates content problems.

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If our perspective resonates with you, The Employee Content Experience Playbook goes deeper into how employees actually experience content and why most organizations misdiagnose the problem.

It’s designed to reframe thinking, not prescribe solutions.